‘I’ll only distress it more. Which side do you want?’

‘Black.’ She sat down, pulling her chair around to face his.

They began to set up the pieces. ‘That’s odd. Most people choose white.’

‘I suppose that I like other people to make the first move,’ she murmured, not looking up.

‘I’m just the opposite.’

‘Are you really?’

They played for a few minutes, then Smith seemed to break off thinking about a move. ‘My niece came to see me on the cricket pitch today. She’s down from Newnham College. She was dressed in trousers.’

‘Oh, a suffragette. Silly things. We’ll get the vote sooner or later, just as Mill predicted. I don’t think there’s much point in burning things down.’

‘No,’ Smith agreed. ‘There’s always a way to talk yourself out of a situation. She dragged me off into the orchard.’

‘You did say niece?’

‘Yes. My brother’s daughter. She’s called Bernice. You ought to meet her. I’m sure you’d like each other.’

‘Quite possibly. These bright young things take my breath away, with their motor cars and their vortexes.’

‘Sorry, their what?’

‘Oh, you know, Wyndham Lewis and all that. It is as if all the rules about art have been torn up. All very exciting, but they do make me feel quite old.’

‘Oh, Bernice isn’t that young. Thirty-two. I think.’

‘Your brother must be much older than you.’

‘Yes. He’s a sailor. Got his nose caught in… She wanted me to see a tree.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. She tried to find something there, but couldn’t. She told me it was very important.’

‘Oh dear. Do you think that she could be in trouble?’

‘Perhaps. I don’t know. She seemed to think that I was.’

‘Hmm. I could imagine you getting into trouble quite easily, but I think you would be able to get out of it, also.’

‘That’s not usually the way.’

‘I can see you as a prefect or something, running about organizing things. Where did you go to school?’

‘Well, that’s complicated… An old woman taught me how to read, at my father’s hearth. Her name was Sarah McLeod. She died at Culloden.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry. A classical place for a McLeod to die, though.’

A sudden image had rushed into Smith’s mind, contradictory to anything he could express⁠ — an old lady on the end of a bayonet. ‘She was old,’ he whispered. ‘And then I went to a little school in London. I carried the Oxford English Dictionary in my left blazer pocket and a bag of marbles in my right. No wonder I started to lean to the left.’

Joan laughed. ‘You seem to have lived several lifetimes. Like Whitman, you contain multitudes.’

‘It feels that way, sometimes,’ Smith agreed, missing the reference.